Mike Daisey on This American Life

Even with a TiVo I still mostly know when shows are on television. Maybe not what channel but almost always what day and mostly what time. While I like NPR, I've never been able to remember when various programs are on. I usually just listen in the car and catch whatever is on. Now that Boston has two good NPR stations it's even worse as shows are on multiple times.

I haven't listened to This American Life much lately. That's probably going to change. I listened live to the show today, Retraction and in spite of the fact it was fessing up to a mistake, it was fascinating radio. Now if I can just remember that the pause button the remote won't work.

So it turns out that Mike Daisey's story about visiting the Foxconn factory in China where they make Apple products was at least in part, made up. He did visit, and there are (complicated) issues with Chinese labor practices, but many of the details in his account were untrue. This American Life did not do their usual level of fact checking on the story and ran it. This was their mistake and they apologize for it.

Daisey claims that his story was designed as theater and not journalism and therefore there's more latitude in factual accuracy. He now regrets airing the story on TAL as NPR is clearly a journalistic venue. What's worse is that the producers conversed with him to verify the accuracy before the broadcast because they knew that theater wasn't journalism and they wanted all the facts to be "utterly unassailable by anyone who might hear it" and Daisey replied to them "I totally get that. I want you to know that makes sense to me".

But he never told them he made stuff up and he admits he felt trapped as this was going to air and he wished TAL had just killed the story. But he kept quiet and let it go on and then I saw him talk about the topic on other news show appearances.

It's definitely worth listening to TAL's Retraction rather than just reading the transcript. Daisey talks with Ira Glass and is clearly struggling at times. There are long pauses and their significance isn't accurately conveyed by just an ellipsis.

Daisey doesn't seem to come completely clean. He wrote, that his "only regret" is "that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue." He does say to Glass "I'm Sorry" in response to this question, "I have such a weird mix of feelings about this, because I simultaneously feel terrible, for you, and also, I feel lied to. And also I stuck my neck out for you. You know I feel like, I feel like, like I vouched for you. With our audience. Based on your word."

At that point in the story I felt exactly the same way as Glass. The way TAL puts this together demonstrates that they have great storytelling ability and you don't have to lie or exaggerate to tell great stories (in limited amounts of time).

So I get that narrative literature, theater and movies take dramatic license with history. There are documentaries and then there are dramas. I've seen films where I question why I'm watching a dramatization of a story rather than a documentary about it. Oliver Stone's W. comes to mind. Or about specific changes like the existence Kevin Costner's character in Thirteen Days.

I get that sometimes you have to leave out significant things, or compress time or merge individuals into composite characters. I know that the law treats stories about historical or public figures differently from those about private individuals. But there are still libel and slander laws and there's a reason that dramatizations often use pseudonyms for people or organizations. I still want the general gist to be correct and that might be the case here but I'm not sure. Rob Schmitz in NPR's Marketplace broke this story and says:

"What makes this a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple’s own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple."

I also have to commend This American Life for the third act of their Retraction. Realizing that the story isn't only about them, they tried to report on the real working conditions in China and it's of course, complicated. They still manage to cover it in far less time than Daisey's monologue.